A hobbing machine is a specialized form of milling machine that may be used to mill gear teeth into a gear blank and thereby produce a gear member or a splined member. The hobbing machine generates a gear member by synchronously rotating a gear blank and a cutter or bob tool as the hob tool is brought into engagement with the gear blank. The hob tool can produce a burr on the gear member when the gear teeth are being cut. The burr is preferably removed by a de-burring tool to improve the performance of the gear member. In the present art, de-burring in hobbing machines is accomplished by a sharp edge tool such as a steel disk that removes burrs via the shearing action at the intersection of the steel disk and the gear blank. This conventional type of de-burring is not well suited for gear blank work pieces with raised thrust faces or complex edge chamfer designs. In these cases, additional processing steps are required for complete burr removal, additional processing such as chamfering machines, abrasive/wire wheel machines, shot blasting, and abrasive slurry de-burring as examples.
Therefore, a need exists for a hobbing machine de-burring apparatus that can effectively de-burr a gear blank work piece having raised thrust faces or complex chamfer designs without the need to incur the cost of additional processing steps outlined above.